[Editorial] Intellectual Property Wars; "The No-Win Scenario"

An interesting phenomenon in the world of computing has been developing over the past decade. Furthermore, it seems to have accelerated even further during the era of smartphones. What I am referring to is Intellectual Property Wars, or 'IP Wars'. IP Wars are these ongoing legal battles between different technology companies, in which one tries to gain the upper hand over the other by using the legal system instead of competing with each other legitimately in the marketplace by innovating and evolving.

It's important to differentiate between 'IP Wars' and the legitimate defense of a a trademark, copyright or patent. The original purpose of any Patent Office, or Copyright/Trademark Office is to help protect individuals or companies from having their ideas stolen. This is a laudable and important goal, and should be preserved. Unfortunately, the system could use some refining, because the way it exists now practically invites abuse, but also, we need a paradigm shift in the way the world's tech companies look at these legal matters. The current perspective encourages this abuse, which results in the IP Wars that I am referring to, and in the long-run, these IP Wars will end up being a "no-win scenario" for everyone, including the companies involved, the consumers, and the taxpayers.

The easiest current examples are the several different legal battles started by Apple against competitors, although there are several examples throughout the last few years of other companies besides just Apple. For now, we will take just a few of Apple's lawsuits as examples. The first lawsuit example from Apple seems to be a purely 'anti-competitive' move rather than an actual bid to defend their IP. This is their lawsuit against Amazon for use of the phrase "Appstore" to describe their app store. Apple previously trademarked the words "App Store", and wanted to sue/block Amazon from using the phrase (which itself leads one to question if the Trademark office was thinking clearly - since these two words are so general and generic it invites accidental abuse). I have yet to talk to anyone, even Apple fans, that think this makes any sense whatsoever. In fact, Microsoft is still in the process of fighting Apple to reverse the trademark altogether. This is obviously a case where Apple has decided to spend some of its $76 Billion dollars in reserves just to see if they can throw out a lawsuit that will stick. This is an abuse of the system, which costs taxpayer dollars and forces Amazon to spend some of its reserves just to fight off this legal "pot shot". This is tremendously wasteful, and there should be some legal repercussions built in to the system to deter this type of frivolous lawsuit, so that companies will think twice before they fling their lawyers at each other.

The second example is actually fairly debatable on several levels. This is Apple's lawsuits against HTC and Samsung, for violating technology patents, and for "the look and feel" of its products. I can fully understand if a company wants to protect its interests, and it should be allowed to do so. Also, if these two companies really did use some of Apple's patents without permission, then there should be some recompense. However, the way that Apple has gone about this, really makes you wonder if their intention was really to protect their interests, or if it was simply just to stifle HTC and Samsung (and by proxy